December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Another groups handling of disruptive people
by hawkwind＠dink.foretune.co.jp 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>[previous post bunch of irc drivel...] interesting net snobbery >is there any reason why this was posted here? Naturally, or haven't you been following the epic discussion here on how to deal with disruptive people?

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IRC and the Feeling of Power
by Mike Ingle 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hawkwind describes the "justice system" of IRC in his forward. It seems to me that the kick/ban process on IRC is a good example of how not to moderate a forum. Many people on IRC seem to be there for no other purpose than to enjoy the testosterone high of being op. They go to a lot of trouble to write bots which keep their channels open and op them when they join. They take great pleasure in kicking people. There is often a little clique which runs a channel, and whenever one of those people joins, someone else ops him. Have you ever been on a channel where nobody was saying anything, but people were constantly opping, de-opping, kicking, banning, unbanning, coming back in and flooding the channel before being kicked again, etc...? I don't use IRC that much, but from what I've seen, that system doesn't work very well. An extropians-style kill command would probably be better for IRC or the list. If someone is causing trouble, you could just set to ignore them.

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It had to happen...
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

M >This message and my response were wiretapped by the people M >investigating the hacking. They traced the hacker and arrested him. His M >computer was encrypted with Secure Drive. M >--Mike What an honor. We've had a hard time getting actual criminal types to use strong crypto in spite of the fears of LE types but here you get a case just a few weeks after releasing Secure Drive. DCF --- WinQwk 2.0b#1165

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Re: IRC and the Feeling of Power
by Mike Ingle 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>As a more frequent user of IRC, I agree with you. However, the problem is >generally technical. This system was established because IRC channels have >no "home" server or organization which can claim "ownership" and >"responsibility" for the behavior and content of the channel. These problems will exist in any distributed system, so solutions need to be worked out. >>I don't use IRC that much, but from >>what I've seen, that system doesn't work very well. An extropians-style >>kill command would probably be better for IRC or the list. If someone is >>causing trouble, you could just set to ignore them. >I would prefer a system of "talkers" and "listeners". The channel >administration, whatever this may be, decides who can talk and who must >listen. There is a tentative first step toward this goal in the current >wave of server revisions. Why have an administration at all? Why not just give everyone an /exclude command which eliminates everything from a particular person, and an /include command which restores output from that person. If someone is ranting or flooding, everyone will /exclude him and he will be left with only himself for an audience. --- Mike

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Re: The Cyber Lexicon of 2030 AD
by fnerd＠smds.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

*Fuse*: (n) 1) Software or hardware to isolate a net, system or subsystem in the event of detection of a security or resource use problem. 2) reputation. *Crowbar*: (n) Type of _cannibal_ that, on detecting a security or resource use problem, blows _fuses_ in outside systems by flooding communications channels with noise, triggering security checks in other systems, and/or exhausting bank accounts, credit lines and stores of _e-cash_. The effect of a crowbar is harder to reset by a presumed intruder than that of an internal fuse. A countermeasure to _mug shots_. *Mug Shots*: (n) Backups of the state of a system to allow repeated attempts at cracking it. A countermeasure to _cannibals_. *Runaway*: (n) Endless echoing of messages caused by bugs in routing software. Usually refers to a bug that exacerbates its own trigger conditions, such as traffic level or lack of storage space. -fnerd(a)smds.com ~ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a aKxB8nktcBAeQHabQP/d7yhWgpGZBIoIqII8cY9nG55HYHgvtoxiQCVAgUBLMs3K ui6XaCZmKH68fOWYYySKAzPkXyfYKnOlzsIjp2toust1Q5A3/n54PBKrUDN9tHVz 3Ch466q9EKUuDulTU6OLsilzmRvQJn0EJhzd4pht6hanC0R3seYNhUYhoJViCcCG sRjLQs4iVVM= =9wqs -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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The Cyber Lexicon of 2030
by terry.smith＠canrem.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mnemonic(a)eff.org wrote |-------------------------------| > of littering. The MD Pound > logo features the mustaches of Salvador Dali, a notably prolific > 20th century surrealist. > > *Municipal Dump*: (n) an institution formed by the |-------------------------------| Hi - this was great - but I only got the first and last message in the series. Could you re-post it? Also, I have no internet access.. Terry Smith - XANTH sysop - 1:259/510 CI$ 70733,3013 PGP 2.3A KEY FREQABLE AS 'KEY'. My opinions are not that of my company. But one day they WILL be! And then - the -+*WORLD*+- Bwaw ha ha !!. Read the Tick and others by NEC. Geraldo - "So, Mr. Smith, you admit you like to eat babies!" Me - "Nono - I admit I like to eat BABES!" --- * TLX v1.55 * A bug is a feature that didn't make it into the manual.

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Secure Drive Distribution
by edgar＠spectrx.saigon.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- After reading Mike Ingle's post of Dec 21, I withdraw my request for a "public-spirited Cypherpunk (perhaps even an anonymous one) to place Secure Drive on an FTP site or a site with an E-mail file server." Mike said: If you do this [upload Secure Drive to an FTP or mailserver site], please make it a U.S./Canada only site. If you mean a site -in- the USA/Canada, no problem. If you mean a site which will not send files outside the USA/Canada, I don't think there is any such animal. The only site even -attempting- to restrict service I've heard of is RSA.com, which distributes RSAREF. And I think it would be rather easy to spoof. A foreigner can easily login to any public -domestic- internet BBS with just an international phone call, giving him a domestic-looking net address. Even if you distribute every copy yourself, Mike, you are not immune from this kind of "spoofing." >So far I still haven't heard from Eric. I did get two responses. >The first was anonymous and sent me a copy of Secure Drive with >a request for me to post it to foreign FTP site(s). The second >was a request from a foreign site for me to send them a copy. I'd like to see more about this, in private mail if you don't want to post it to the list. Not much to tell. I didn't keep copies of either request. I think the non-anon one was from Australia, maybe. The non-distribution of the beta was because I had no way to check it, and it could easily have eaten hard drives. I did say in the ad that you were not to export, although I didn't make anyone send a statement. Maybe I should have. Perhaps. But the ad says: This program may be freely distributed within the U.S. and Canada; do not export it. and the docs say: Exporting this program. This program is for use in the US and Canada only. Cryptography is export controlled, and sending this program outside the country may be illegal. Don't do it. Fine. But "freely distributed in the USA & Canada" would include uploading it to domestic BBS's & anon. FTP sites by my interpretation of English. If a foreigner enters the country and smuggles a copy home with him, whether he does it physically or electronically, he is committing the criminal act; not whoever uploaded SD and certainly not Mike. On the Hacker matter Mike said: They are going to attempt to break Secure Drive. He asked me to write a program which will take a list of passphrases and test them quickly to run a passphrase attack. I had a few qualms about writing a program to crack someone's data, but I don't think it really matters. Unless the hacker chose a very lame key, they don't have a prayer in hell. By all means, go ahead & write the program to their specs.! Of course, as a "forensic software consultant" you're entitled to a fee. I would say a minimum of $100/hour is "fair." After they try that for a while, you can offer an improvement that will try "more keys of a smaller possible set faster" by just trying the 2^128 keys directly without bothering with a passphrase, along with a mod to LOGIN which will insert a binary key directly rather than use MD5 on a passphrase. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLR8uuN4nNf3ah8DHAQHQ1AP/ZXImvQO2XxKXi/k2CCMPgD12rYPAcfZp ZabuyERUGW8UuKZJLS8Wy4i7q2EdWi1TT80dKhHVQgO6ec+ybKyirXN/N8Ahz3BF zKqa+YKKgaroxv50Xg4RdQ3Cr/rfYQeQ0yiH1VdJOJj4dVwDMTnm+uC/Uph/wXJI U53PBfQWR28= =T2cH -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- edgar(a)spectrx.saigon.com (Edgar W. Swank) SPECTROX SYSTEMS +1.408.252.1005 Cupertino, Ca

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NBC news.
by GRABOW_GEOFFREY＠tandem.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Greetings all, NBC Nightly news recently did a report on the Internet and NII, at the end of which, they mentioned that they have an Internet address of: news:nightly@nbc.com They asked for comments regarding the use/misuse of Internet and I'm sure that they would be thrilled to hear from us. So drop 'em a line and tell 'em your opinion of the NII. ******************************************************************** Geoffrey C. Grabow grabow_geoffrey(a)tandem.com Oyster Bay, New York 'What we demand are rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!' - Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy ********************************************************************

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GPS and security
by m5＠vail.tivoli.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

CBS's "60 Minutes" had a "Oooh Scarey" segment about the Global Positioning System last Sunday. The scarey part is, according to 60 Minutes, that any old terrorist government can now put together accurate guided missles and wreak death and destruction upon our homeland. The crux of the problem is that the system broadcasts out positioning information to one and all indiscriminately, and according to the show there's no way we can stop it. Because my mind is regularly exposed to wild conspiracy theories and all sorts of crazed paranoiac ravings (i.e., I read Usenet), I started thinking that this is rather unlikely. I speculated that the government may in fact have designed the satellite systems so that they could be told to do several things in case of national emergency: * Shut down (probably possible; they may have actually mentioned this on the show). Problem is that lots of friendlies may grow to rely on the data for life-critical things, like guiding commercial airliners. * Shut down normal transmission and begin strongly encrypted transmission. No mention of this; apparently, the satellites were originally designed with some sort of weak system that made the data difficult to use for high-accuracy purposes, but that's been defeated (by the FAA or someone contracted thereto). * Enter into a bogus-cleartext with encrypted subchannel mode, where the plaintext is slyly made to be wrong, but using some subchannel encrypted "good stuff" is still available. I don't know much about how this system works, so I don't know whether any of my thoughts are relevant. It's probably most likely that the government indeed blasted these things up into space without considering using encryption technology to enhance security. -- Mike McNally : m5(a)tivoli.com : Day Laborer : Tivoli Systems : Austin, TX ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Remember that all experimentation does not produce extrapolated results. - k. pisichko

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Re: anonymous video rental store - Libraries
by jazz＠hal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Out of curiousity, has any ftp-archive maintainer tried to join the American Library Association, either directly or as part of some university's library system? I'm not sure what this would do. My wife is a professional librarian and a member of the ALA (and SLA and a few other besides) - as far as I know, the ALA doesn't directly intervene to protect its members. Jason

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Re: GPS and security
by Brenden Kootsey 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Like Mike, I don't claim to know much about the GPS, and I didn't see the 60 Minutes report, but it was my understanding that at least a portion of the signal is encrypted. The signal available to us mortal (non-U.S. military) types has a built-in inaccuracy; while it is still accurate enough for some general use, it is not nearly as accurate as the signal available to the military. Anyone have more of the technical details, especially regarding the accuracy?

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CACM Letters
by Pat Farrell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There is a very nice letter on the government's rationale for controlling crypto in the current January 94 (received today) CACM, by Walter M Anderson. The main claim is that the government must want to control US citizens, because no other reason is logically consistant. And a nice short one from our own CME. Pat Pat Farrell Grad Student pfarrell(a)netcom.com Department of Computer Science George Mason University, Fairfax, VA Public key availble via finger #include <standard.disclaimer>

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RE: GPS and security
by Pat Farrell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is a bit off list topics. Press D now if you don't like it.... In message Tue, 28 Dec 93 14:01:15 CST, m5(a)vail.tivoli.com (Mike McNally) writes: > * Shut down normal transmission and begin strongly encrypted > transmission. No mention of this; apparently, the satellites were > originally designed with some sort of weak system that made the data > difficult to use for high-accuracy purposes, but that's been defeated > (by the FAA or someone contracted thereto). The GPS system was designed to have two modes, one highly acurate for military use, and a low accuracy version for commerce. Since initially no one had receivers, the whole system used military grade for the first few years. Before the Gulf war started, the military needed zillions of GPS units, so they bought commercial marine navigrtion units. After the war, there was talk of turning on the division, but that was made impractical with 'differential' calibration. To get military accuracy, all you have to do is take the commercial GPS to known places. Such as the surveying marks at the US Naval Acadamy, or "ground zero" in the Pentagon. Get your "imprecise" reading, calculate the difference between it at the known value, and use it for subsequent calculations. I expect that triangulation with a few known sites is better than a single one. Last I hear from the Sailing trade press was that the Gov still talked about going to the split setup, but there was little belief that they would. BTW, two satellites is enuff for a general location fix. Three identifies a place on the globe, four adds altitude (handy for planes, bombs, and missles) Pat Pat Farrell Grad Student pfarrell(a)netcom.com Department of Computer Science George Mason University, Fairfax, VA Public key availble via finger #include <standard.disclaimer>

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GPS and security
by jazz＠hal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I speculated that the government may in fact have designed the satellite systems so that they could be told to do several things in case of national emergency: * Shut down (probably possible; they may have actually mentioned this on the show). Problem is that lots of friendlies may grow to rely on the data for life-critical things, like guiding commercial airliners. It's worse; the military relies on GPS. During the Gulf War large numbers of combat vehicles could rendezvous with high accuracy and no radio contact in the dark of night; staggeringly important in limiting fratricide as well (though not as well as one might have liked...) * Shut down normal transmission and begin strongly encrypted transmission. No mention of this; apparently, the satellites were originally designed with some sort of weak system that made the data difficult to use for high-accuracy purposes, but that's been defeated (by the FAA or someone contracted thereto). * Enter into a bogus-cleartext with encrypted subchannel mode, where the plaintext is slyly made to be wrong, but using some subchannel encrypted "good stuff" is still available. Well, this sounds like the "selective availability" (SA) capability, which still exists and has in fact been turned on. It is defeatable, but only under certain circumstances (see below). GPS is a clock-based system; by talking to a constellation of satellites (I think the minimum is 4, with 5 being desired and 6 being best) and munging the timestamps received from them, GPS systems can compute their location to a degree of precision related to the precision of the clocks. SA essentially truncates a few bits off the low-end of the time stamps and makes them available in an encrypted form. Without the key to decrypt the low-order bits, you get location information to within a couple hundred meters or so; with the low-order bits, within about six feet. During the Gulf War, the US military was unable to get enough military GPS receivers (i.e. ones that could decrypt the selectively-available data). Instead, they bought commercial over-the-counter GPS receivers and turned SA off. As soon as they got enough SA-enabled receivers, they turned it on. SA is defeated by something called Differential GPS. Basically, a ground station at a fixed location constantly computes its position via GPS, computes the difference between the GPS location and its known correct location, and broadcasts the correction factor. A differential-capable GPS receiver computes its location via GPS and then applies the correction fac- tor from the nearest differential station. These corrections are obviously of decreasing accuracy the farther you get from the fixed-position station, but you can correct for that to some degree once you have an estimate of the direction and distance from your location to that of the differential broadcaster; apply corrections iteratively until they converge. The requirement, of course, is that you be someplace near a differential GPS station. These stations are maintained by the US Coast Guard and obviously exist only where there is navigable water (and certainly not everywhere, since they take time and money to build). I'm curious if anyone has attempted to crack the encryption used in selective availability; although Differential GPS solves my most important issues (coastal navigation) it's be nice to be able to use a handheld GPS receiver in the middle of Rock Mountain National Park or some such and still locate yourself on the bloody maps with some precision. Jason

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GPS and security
by northrop＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

If the military is worried about delivery systems' accuracy, Phil Karn already mentioned kamikazies, but if you don't want to make suicide part of the package, you could always just have someone drop a radio transmitter on your target sometime in advance, possibly a day or two. The missile can then home in on the signal. (If you need to get it inside a high-security area, you could always encase it in foam and drop it from a model airplane or launch it in a model rocket.) Or you could just leave a suitcase with a timed bomb at your target location; plutonium bombs can be very small. It boggles my mind that the military mind prevents the use of tools that are just too complicated for the "bad guys" to bother with. Does CBS have an email address yet? :) -- Scott Northrop <northrop(a)netcom.com> (206)784-2083 ObVirus: The demand for obedience is inherently evil. ObVirus2: As a juror in a Trial by Jury, you have the right, power and duty to acquit the defendant if you judge the law itself to be unjust.

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NBC news address correction.
by GRABOW_GEOFFREY＠tandem.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Oops! The previous message incorrectly gave the address of news:nightly@nbc.com it should be: nightly(a)nbc.com Sorry about that chief!

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Re: Secure Drive Distribution
by W. Kinney 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Edgar Swank writes: > If you mean a site -in- the USA/Canada, no problem. If you mean a > site which will not send files outside the USA/Canada, I don't think > there is any such animal. The only site even -attempting- to restrict ripem.msu.edu evidently has such a policy. I'm considering using it to distribute Curve Encrypt. Anybody have any experience with this site? Should be pretty funny distributing PGP-authenticated software from the Ripem ftp site, but I guess if they don't mind, neither do I :-). -- Will

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Re: GPS and security
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Thanks to Phil for the technical descriptions about GPS; I'd heard numbers like 1 foot for Differential accuracy. One minor correction to the "military buying civilian GPS gear" issues - a lot of it wasn't the military itself buying the gear, it was individual soldiers or their parents buying the sets so their kids wouldn't get lost out in the desert. I was at an AFCEA trade show, mainly looking for imaging and crypto stuff, but two of the biggest hits were the various GPS vendors and a vendor selling small drone airplanes. (Very few people probably needed the things for work, but they were Neat Stuff and you could understand what it did.) The 6-foot wingspan model had a payload of about 35 pounds; the 10-foot model had about 120 pounds, where payload includes fuel plus whatever else. The primary applications it was being marketed for were radio repeaters and video camera transmission systems, but the Army makes a backpack-carriable nuke that leaves you enough fuel-weight to get 1-200 miles.... Bill Stewart # Bill Stewart NCR Corp, 6870 Koll Center Parkway, Pleasanton CA, 94566 # Voice/Beeper 510-224-7043, Phone 510-484-6204 # email bill.stewart(a)pleasantonca.ncr.com billstewart(a)attmail.com

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Cylex is already reality
by jdblair＠nextsrv.cas.muohio.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The very first entry of the Cyberspace Lexicon, *autolott* is well on its way to becoming a reality. An Associated Press story, "Is lottery by phone the ticket?" was on the front page of my local paper today. The article describes a proposed plan to establish a lottery where one would select numbers and pay for tickets via a touch-tone phone. The system would involve depositing money in a special account which the lottery commission could also access. The system could be set to purchase tickets when the jackpot reaches certain levels automatically. "Players could bet until their accounts are depleted, withdraw mopney anytime and replenish their accounts by check, electronic transfer, or credit card." It does state that "each wager would carry a $2 service charge." It souldn't be long before they realize they save more money by not printing the tickets. I don't have time to type in the whole article, but I think you get the picture. Six states are already interested. I'm surprised they didn't suggest just setting it up as a 900 number, or are there laws against that? So how long will it be before Las Vegas goes on-line? Call 1-800-LOAN-YES for easy credit extensions today! -john. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ John Blair <jdblair(a)nextsrv.cas.muohio.edu> phone: (513) 529-4879 Insert cool signature file that makes a trendy, yet bold and original statement about my cyberspace proficiency, then mentions that I'll send you my PGP public key if you want it, and you trust that I'm actually me.

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No Subject
by ltech1!ltech1!mercury＠heifetz.msen.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Why WHY THINGS ARE MEASURED BY NUMBERS NEAR ONE by Michael E. Marotta We naturally choose scales that are naturally in tune with Nature. To do otherwise would be unharmonious and would be rejected by practice over time. Here are the numbers from an article about the Great Lakes in the World Book Encyclopedia. 5 lakes 1 in US 4 border 1909 year of treaty 94,650 combined area 600 alt of Superior 245 alt of Ontario 325 drop from Erie to Ont 1900 Chicago canal opened 1,000 miles inland 20 drop in St. Mary's 3 canal groups 1959 St. Law Seaway 182 miles of Seaway 2 times more than Panama Depths Areas 1333 31,800 Superior 923 22,400 Michigan 750 23,000 Huron 210 9,930 Erie 778 7,520 Ontario The numbers 4,5, and 6 are uncommon. You can round 7,8,9 to the next order of magnitude and make them all 1. This doesn't need explanation. Finding that measures clustered near 5 would...

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T-SHIRT UPDATE #2
by cvoid＠albemuth.tatertot.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Greetings. Sorry for the delay, I hope you all had a wonderful holiday. We are finishing up the t-shirt design, and it will soon be made available for approval in it's entirity. The plan is to have people order before the end of January (February 1st being the cutoff), and have the shirts shipped out in the first week of February. We are doing only as many shirts as we get orders for, hence the mass mailing. I will be posting an update in the next few days with information on the preview files and ordering information. The t-shirts will cost approximately $10 each, and will include shipping, etc. All additional information will be posted in the next update... We are only doing one mass run of this design, so it will not be made available again in the future. If anyone has any questions or comments please mail me. Thanks. Christian Void /T71 | "I don't like it, and I'm sorry I | V/M/Research, Inc. cvoid(a)netcom.COM | ever had anything to do with it." | P.O. Box 170213 Tel. 1+415-807-5491 | -Erwin Schrodinger (1887-1961) | SF, CA 94117-0213 * PGP v2.3a Public Key Available Via Finger *

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Domestic ftp sites
by mpjohnso＠nyx10.cs.du.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> If you mean a site -in- the USA/Canada, no problem. If you mean a >> site which will not send files outside the USA/Canada, I don't think >> there is any such animal. The only site even -attempting- to restrict >ripem.msu.edu evidently has such a policy. I'm considering using it to >... I've just started an ftp site with a USA/Canada distribution policy for crypto software. Nothing can totally prevent the theft of data from this site, or ripem.msu.edu or rsa.com, but I decided that I would exercise my right to publish within the USA anyway. About the best I can do without demanding to see proof of citizenship in person (and even that could be forged) is to make it very difficult to get the data without reading a warning notice first, and hope that a combination of conscience along with the possibility of the actions being traced by the U. S. Government and/or the government of the perpetrator's country will limit the number of violations. anonymous ftp to csn.org and read mpj/README.MPJ for details. There is also the Colorado Catacombs BBS (303-938-9654) crypto areas that I hope to expand. Mike Johnson mpjohnso(a)nyx10.cs.du.edu

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VOICE-Why not?
by charliemerritt＠BIX.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Why isn't there a cypherpunk-ish voice crypto system? I would have to guess that it has to do with compression. Compression, lack of CPU and baud rate and money for gadgets. Well I have been fooling around and I think we can get a punk-phone up real quick. My system: 286-12 2400 baud modem sound blaster With just this I can get poor quality recognition of speech, In realtime. With a 9600 baud modem and nothing more than CVD for compression algorithm, fairly decent speech is a snap for the dumbest CPU. Surely the crypto is a lead pipe certainty in realtime. I would like to see this minimal secure phone system SOON: hardware: 286 9600 BPS (7680 bits of data/sec) sound blaster software: CVD "push to talk" (one at a time, please) xor against prng If we got this up, then people could improve on it, add "real" crypto auto detection of faster cpu for "real compression" etc. My point is we have to have something to improve on. My 2400 baud 286 compression is poor quality, very poor. But interesting, it shows what can be done with nothing. If the general feeling is that it would not be too disruptive i could post a reconstructed speech snippet UU Encoded on this list. (.VOC)

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RE: GPS and security
by Pat Farrell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is still off list, so consider pressing D now... Phil, Thanks for the corrections In message Tue, 28 Dec 1993 15:03:49 -0800, karn(a)qualcomm.com (Phil Karn) writes: > >>[general erroneous drivel elided] >> Such as the surveying marks at the US Naval Acadamy, or >>"ground zero" in the Pentagon. > > False. > [general good stuff by Phil elided] Last time I looked, the Pentagon was more than 100 meters in diameter. One of Phil's later posts talks about SA being in a 100 meter range. Obviously the Coast Guard and FAA want pretty good accuracy. Whatever the actual numbers on the error terms are, either a moderate high explosive, or tiny nuke, guided to within 100 meters of the Ground Zero Cafe will probably take out all of the above ground portions of the Pentagon. Look at what a single smart bomb (a fairly small one at that) did in the Pentagon's favorite Gulf War video. Similarly, just off the Naval Acadamy's grounds is a huge array of naval communincations gear. It wouldn't take much to put atserious hurt in the Navy's C-cubed net. And you could easily use GPS to get close, and then image recognition for final targeting. Seems to me that the important concept here is that this is yet another technology that the government can't control once its out of the bottle. The scare tactics, and worrisome quotes about "terrorists and drug dealers" will cause confusion among the masses, but I can't see them having any long term effect. Pat Pat Farrell Grad Student pfarrell(a)netcom.com Department of Computer Science George Mason University, Fairfax, VA Public key availble via finger #include <standard.disclaimer>

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Cypherpunk Credit Union
by L. Detweiler 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hello cy{ph,b}er{wo,pu}nks. I wanted to follow up on a posting by B.Stewart who said that the cypherpunks are putting together a cash credit union over the Internet. I have a few questions about this. 1. Do you have to join the CA cypherpunks to learn about this? Obviously you guys have been working on this a long time, and as long as I was on the list I barely saw any peep about it. 2. Is this a private development group? Is it open to anyone who wishes to join? If so, are cy{b,ph}erwonks allowed to join in the development? We are interested in these kinds of projects. 3. Do you have a mailing list dedicated to this project alone or other internet development projects? We know about the cypherpunks list but there are rumors that there are some other development lists `behind the scenes' -- are these open to the public? 4. If any of your projects are indeed secret, why are many cypherpunks actively engaged in a campaign on the imp-interest list (Internet Mercantile Protocols)? Why don't you just stick to your own project and let the Internet sort out which protocol is more acceptable to the world-at-large? 5. What about the rumors that seem to be confirmed by what B.Stewart said about evading tax laws and black marketeering, that the cypherpunk credit union is actually a surreptitious front for plans to provide money laundering over the Internet? 6. Again, if this is a public project, why is there so little documentation available? There doesn't seem to be any on soda.berkeley.edu, and many of my requests elsewhere have been ignored. 7. What is the David Chaum connection to all this? I know that he met with E.Hughes to discuss plans but are the Cypherpunks to be understood as the U.S.-based Chaum group? Thanks in advance for any information, I hope we can get more cooperation where our goals overlap; it seems to me like we have many common goals.

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